


The Hardest Goodbyes (Are The Ones We Never Say)

by MellytheHun



Series: Kylux Angst November [9]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Denial, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, I still don't accept Hux's canon name, M/M, Mutual Pining, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, still using my fanon name for him, tumblr event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8609767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Day Twenty-One of Angst November: The Hardest Goodbyes





	

**Author's Note:**

> _“Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”_ – Stephen King

_The Finalizer_ had always seemed so enormous – and Hux had always been proud of that fact. However, now that he is walking the plank, so to speak, every corridor is much too short and every turn comes up much too fast. 

Shrugging his greatcoat more over his shoulders, Hux steadily walks ahead, away from the med bay where he’s spent the last seventy-six hours and toward his certain death. 

Starkiller is gone. His trooper program failed. The map was lost. 

Snoke won’t let him live through this conference and he knows that.

He spent some quality time with Phasma in his quarters first, but she refused to believe that he will be punished for what she perceives as Ren’s errors. She insisted that Supreme Leader would see it that way as well – that his program hadn’t failed and created a traitor, but that Ren failed to sense treasonous thoughts aboard the ship. She insisted that Supreme Leader would see that Starkiller was a resounding success and that the difficult loophole it took finding to destroy it was also, convoluted as the explanation was, Ren’s fault as well. 

Hux doesn’t like shirking responsibility. He wants as much attention and credit for his shortcomings as he does his glories and victories; let the scales of his life show equilibrium and cohesion. If he has failed – and he has – he should like to be punished accordingly because he honestly believes in the cause he has dedicated his life (and subsequently, his death) to. 

Law, consequences, justice and order – this is all Hux has ever stood for or believed in. It is all he has ever fought for. To run from it would be counterintuitive and hypocritical. Order comes at a price and he has always known this.

The Hosnian system is gone and good riddance – if Phasma is right about anything, there is success to be found in the destruction of the Hosnian system. That will be a dark day for the history of the Republic, a swift genocide unlike the galaxy had seen since Aldeeran and even then, the scale was smaller. Hux has made history.

The galaxy will forever recognize the sound of Hux’s voice, declaring the end of the Republic with vigor, the galaxy will forever fear impeccably parted, slicked back, red hair – they will all fear the shape of a tall man in his perfect uniform made just a bit bigger by the greatcoat on his shoulders. His name will forever be synonymous with venom and death to those that disrupt the peace and buck authority. He knows no other honor with which to leave this life.

There is no comfort in thinking of Ren as the faulty party in this. To give Ren that much credit is a dishonor to Hux and all he has given and sacrificed for the First Order. Starkiller was conceived in Hux’s mind, born through his hard labors and schooling, made cold and efficient through his tireless, thankless work and so if Starkiller is dead, it is dead because Hux failed it – not because Ren is reckless and impulsive. If Starkiller had been perfect as it ought to have been, then Ren’s recklessness and impulsivity should not have been enough to turn it to dust. 

Phasma would hear none of that, however and Hux thinks she might suffer terribly when she finds that he’s dead. She always did care for him – and he has cared for her too. She is reliable, competent and loyal, which might sound dry, but Hux isn’t a flatterer – he’s honest. And those words might seem dry to some, but it’s high praise from a man like Hux. She has been a friend to him – if he has ever had a friend, that is. If he ever did have a friend in this life, it has been Phasma.

When he said goodbye to her, she got glassy-eyed and stormed out of his quarters, ordering him not to say something like that to her again. The doors were shut before he could tell her that he wouldn’t have another chance to say goodbye to her anyway. 

He spent time spoiling Millicent and thinking he hates to leave her most of all. She seemed to know that he isn’t long for this galaxy – she was always a sharp girl. He has slept with her purring away on his stomach every sleep cycle since Starkiller and he’s been more and more reluctant to remove her at the start of every work cycle. He’s not sure what it says about him as a human being that he cares so much more about a cat’s well being than that of any other advanced, sentient life forms, but the truth of that is undeniable. He’d sooner sacrifice a thousand men than see any harm or sadness come to Millicent.

When he said goodbye to Millicent, she cradled her face into his palm and wouldn’t let him move for another twenty minutes. 

Then, there was Ren.

Ren still hasn’t woken.

Hux decided to spend the last of his limited time with Ren despite that. 

He spoke to Ren as though Ren could hear him and maybe with his Force powers or whatever ridiculousness he practices, he really could. 

The man’s in a medically induced coma, recovering from a punctured kidney which caused internal bleeding, a punctured pectoral – high near his shoulder, a laceration burnt across his face, broken ribs and a hairline fracture in his left leg and still, Hux couldn’t say what he really wanted to. 

Which is absurd. Force sensitive or not, Ren probably couldn’t really hear him speaking and it would have behooved Hux to let the last of his confessions go before falling away into oblivion, but he couldn’t. 

What he did instead was he trimmed some of Ren’s hair as he slept (it’s still very long – it grows awfully fast) and he helped to bathe Ren with the on-call nurse and he redressed Ren’s slow healing wounds every twenty hours or more. 

Whenever Ren winced in his sleep, Hux toyed with the fluid distribution in the I.V’s until his face relaxed again and sometimes his breath would catch or stutter and Hux would instinctively reach out and touch Ren to even out his in and exhalation. He’d brush Ren’s hair away from his face, rub circles over his chest or grip Ren’s twitching hand and the breathing would even out. 

If Hux were quiet for a long while, the heart monitor would spike and if he muttered a single word – anything at all – Ren’s blood pressure would return to normal. Hux always assumed Ren was a lonely person, but he hadn’t realized how starved Ren has been for contact until then. 

Hux thinks that if Ren knew it had been _him_ whispering and petting and washing, that the healing effect Hux’s company seemed to have had would have inverted and turned to rage or defensiveness. And that’s a pity, really, because Hux has very unfortunately grown to care about Ren – certainly more than he meant to. 

That was something else he couldn’t manage to say.

He told Ren the inconsequential things – the things he’d wanted to share before, but never could, the things about his life no one else knew that he never thought Ren would take an interest in but he wanted to tell Ren anyway. 

He talked about his frigid, controlled childhood, the merciless anger and unending disappointment in his father’s eyes, the abandonment of his mother, the droids he made for friends as a child. He talked about the Academy, basic training, combat training, going to Officer’s school, joining the fleet, his first detachments and deployments, his first real experiences of combat and how he dominated one rank after another until he stood there as he does now – General Aurelien Hux. 

Highly decorated, held in the highest regards by all those in the military and properly feared by those in opposing parties. 

He told Ren that Ren made work nightmarish for him, made a joke about how he made certain to have his black caf before having to see Ren for the work cycle so that he could have a clean transition from his nightmares into his ‘daymares.’ Ren was unconscious, so did not laugh, but Hux doubts he’d have laughed at that anyway.

Ren has always taken things too seriously and his ego probably would have been wounded had he heard that. 

Hux rolls his eyes and fights a smile as he turns another corner, growing ever closer to the chamber where he will die.

If there’s any ‘missing,’ of anything at all after death, Hux supposes he will miss that particular trait of Ren’s personality. That inflated ego, that childish want for approval and even more childish proclamation that he _doesn’t_ want it. 

There are plenty of things to miss about Ren, actually, as much as Hux never wanted to believe that.

There were so many bothersome conferences that Ren entertained him through – passing along gossip telepathically, making someone Hux hated trip or just as that person was sitting down, pulling the chair too far back and letting them land on the floor with a thud. Hux could never hide his flattered gladness at Ren’s pranks, so he’d duck his head down or hide behind his holopad, feeling Ren’s eyes on him beyond that mask. 

Ren has a temper – as Hux has come to understand it, however, most men that are descendants of the Skywalker bloodline have a flare for the dramatic and Ren is not particularly unique for his untethered rages and upset. Hux only wishes he’d not destroy so much of the ship every time someone or something was so much an inch out of place for his liking. 

Ren has a dry sense of humor; he’s always played the straight man to no corresponding comedian. As if he was the straight man to the slapstick absurdity of all the universe. Hux has enjoyed that sense of humor – he’s not sure he ever had one, really, but he enjoyed whatever sense of humor it is that Ren has.

And while Ren could never be as intellectual as Hux, he is still a smart man. He’s still fairly competent, still capable and good to have an ally in. There were special occasions that Ren would just murder someone Hux didn’t care for and Ren being Snoke’s star pupil, he never was reprimanded for acting out. 

At times, Ren would bring items or foods back from his planet-side missions for Hux – Hux was always pleased to share those meals with Ren and when he’d ask why Ren would bring him any gifts from his missions, Ren would shrug and refuse any other answer.

Hux couldn’t say he really minded. 

If things had been different, he might have pulled Ren aside after a conference and hugged him. If things had been different, he might have held Ren’s hands in an effort to calm him every time he lashed out against Hux’s control panels. If things had been different, he might have kissed Ren over one of their shared dinners and if things had been different, maybe there would’ve been a sleep cycle that Hux would have invited Ren back to his quarters and then never let him go.

Unable or unwilling to say what was most important to say, Hux uneasily decided on pressing his lips to Ren’s temple and whispering there, “may the Force always be with you, Ren.” 

He hesitated in the doorway, legs unsteady, all instincts driving him back toward Ren where he rested. Hux is not a man all that used to second-guessing himself or hesitating at all, so he stood in that unease for a while, staring at Ren from the doorway, not thinking of much. He took note of how dark Ren’s hair looked against the pillows, how much healthier his skin tone had grown since he was first hooked up to all those machines and how full his lips looked, just barely parted in sleep.

He wondered, for the first time, what Ren might have thought of his dignified resignation to capital punishment. 

As imaginative as Hux can be, he couldn’t imagine Ren’s reaction clearly. He couldn’t decide whether Ren would be disappointed in him, disgusted by him or frustrated with him. He could see Ren getting angry, but Ren gets angry at the drop of a hat and so that doesn’t really mean much. Who or what he’d be angry at is more the question Hux couldn’t answer; maybe Ren would have been mad with him to see him ‘surrender,’ in a sense. Maybe Ren would have been mad at Snoke, at himself, at the state of the universe. 

Maybe Ren would have felt nothing at all.

Hux rubbed at his chest when he thought of that, trying to smother the burning sensation away. He vaguely wished he’d had more time with Ren. More of Ren’s voice in his head when he should be paying attention in meetings and more of Ren’s mean-spirited pranks pulled on his behalf, more of Ren’s gifts and delicacies from abroad and more of Ren’s annoying temper.

“I’m glad I knew you, Ren,” Hux said to Ren’s figure, hearing back only the heart monitor. 

“I can’t say that about most and I’ve met a lot of people in my time,” Hux continued, “I’m a well traveled man, you know and I’ve met plenty of people. Hardly remember any of them at the end here… I might think of you when I die, Ren. And I hope that’s alright by you.”

Then would have been the time for parting words, for saying goodbye like he did with Phasma and Millicent, but his mouth turned numbed, his tongue felt swollen and he could do nothing but stare at Ren’s dreaming face in silence.

He thought about apologizing, but he wasn’t sure what he’d be apologizing for. He thought about saying the most important thing to say that he’d never said to anyone, but Ren wouldn’t even hear it if he did say it and he’s a man of routine. He has always hated last minute changes to itinerary and schedule – he wouldn’t say it then. 

If in the last six standard years, he couldn’t manage to say it, he ought not to start then. Still, he lingered in the threshold, reluctant to leave Ren, wondering when Ren would wake, if Ren would mourn him or miss him or not think about him ever again. He wondered what Ren would look like when his eyes flutter open to a new galaxy – one without the Hosnian system, Han Solo and General Hux. He hoped as well.

He hoped for plenty of things; for Ren’s well being, for Ren’s full recovery, for Ren’s victories, Ren’s peace and contentment. 

Hux’s throat felt tight.

He couldn’t say goodbye to Ren.

He couldn’t manage it. The words couldn’t break past the barrier of his gritted teeth with a battering ram – he was frozen, limbless and terribly sad. No – he couldn’t say goodbye to Ren. He just couldn’t.

So, he bowed his head, bit the inside of his cheek until the heat behind his eyes stopped prodding and left without a backward glance. 

He was ten paces down the hall when Ren’s heart monitor sped up, he was down a long corridor near the chow hall when Ren started thrashing and twitching and he was standing outside the conference chamber when Ren startled awake.

As Hux walks through the open chamber doors, the nurses fuss around Ren and Ren’s vision gradually stops swimming. He doesn’t understand what’s happened. He’s felt some great disturbance – the Force flooded his body with Light and now he’s in a cold sweat, hearing Hux’s voice rattling around his head like a quiet record being played from far away. 

He can hear the stories Hux told him all overlapping each other in that familiar cadence, can feel Hux’s smooth hands all over him and it’s the greatest ghost of a comfort he’s ever known. He clumsily stands from the bed and he can hear the nurses scolding him and trying to get him back under the blankets, but it’s like hearing them from under water. His energies are attempting to hone in on something specific, but his mind is muddled with medications.

He looks down at his arms and removes the I.V’s carefully, much to the staff’s ire – he shuts his eyes and doesn’t give them any fraction of his mind. He can’t afford it. Something is pulling him up and out and it’s Hux and – 

_Hux is in danger._

Ren knows what’s happening almost immediately. He can sense Hux’s forlorn energies in the room, sitting in the air like a phantom; he can sense Hux’s wishes for him still lingering by the bedside, he can still see Hux’s figure in the doorway – Hux knows he’s about to die. 

On heels slick with his feverish sweat, Ren runs out of the med bay, down the long halls that have never seemed longer, around the corners that have never seemed to take more time to round and for the first time, Ren hates the enormity of the _Finalizer_. Officers and troopers alike watch him as he flies past them – he’s in only loose-fitting, cotton pants and being chased by a flock of concerned nurses and droids. He can’t mind that he’s probably putting on quite a show – Hux is in danger and is willfully walking into it and Ren will ask why later, but he must eliminate the danger first.

He scrambles past onlookers and pushes his way through standing groups and then he glides to a halt. 

To feel a death through the Force is difficult to explain; Ren tends to think it feels like a tsunami wave that is only just receding. It has done its damage, it has leveled a city or so and now all that is left to do is return to the ebb and flow it has always known. It pulls away and takes with it whatever was not nailed to the ground – the body remains, but the spirit is gone and Ren can feel it happen. He can feel the energy that once was being dragged back by a tide he can’t fight.

His hands shake, his chest feels concave somehow and wobbling at first, he sets off again, less sure but more desperate. He runs and he might be saying something out loud, but he can’t tell what or why. It might be an apology or a prayer or pledge or a curse – his lips might not even be moving. All he knows in certainty is that he can’t feel Hux anymore and he needs… he _needs_ …

When he makes it to the hall of the conference chamber, he runs down it and on those sweaty heels, he slips to a stop against the doors. He bangs on them with his entire body and calls for Hux to no answer.

“Don’t – _Hux_! Master! _Master_! Let me in! Let me in there!”

He throws his fists against the door in an inhuman fury, his weak energies trying to Force-pry the doors open, but they won’t yield to him. He can’t even tell if it is because he is so sick and unwell or if it is Snoke keeping him out with a power greater than he can currently match. Remarkably, he feels no rage – only helpless, hopeless desperation. 

He shuts his eyes tightly, fighting off the tears blossoming between his lashes as he pounds against the doors and screams for Snoke to let him in. When he shuts his eyes, he can see beyond those doors – he can see Hux’s body on the ground, can see Snoke staring at the closed doors where he hears Ren’s cries and he can see the blood, red and shining, pooling across the glossy, obsidian floors.

The body remains, but the spirit is gone.

Ren screams again, banging more loudly and powerfully, cursing to be let in, to let him say goodbye at least, to “please,” “Master, I beg you,” – “just once,” “just one more minute,” “let me see him,” “you don’t understand,” “let me in, Master, I am begging you,” “just give me a moment with him, just a moment,” “just to say goodbye –“

Ill body fluctuating wildly between too hot and too cold, weaker than he’s ever been before, Ren’s pleading and violence eventually stops and reluctantly gives way to tears he isn’t hydrated enough to surrender.

He cries anyway.

His fists unfurl, his body gives out and he slides down, collapsing onto the floor with his forehead pressed against the locked doors. He pleads nonsensically to no one, feels Hux’s absence, but can’t conceive of it, can’t accept it – needs to be in there and hear him one last time or touch him one last time or just confirm one last time that there is – or _was_ – someone in the galaxy that ever cared about him at all.

Hux may not have said it aloud, but Ren always knew – he could always tell. When he boarded after a planet-side mission, Hux’s energy always shifted into something glad and hopeful. When Ren gave Hux gifts, shared dinners with him, Hux’s aura would turn to varying hues of gold and red – he exuded happiness and care and Ren never wanted to say that out loud because he was worried it would vanish if he tried to pin it down.

He thinks now that he ought to have said something. He ought to have asked Hux why he cared, what about Ren made Hux happy, what more could he have done for Hux, how could he have spent their time together more wisely – 

He gasps and struggles to get a breath down to his diaphragm. He shuts his eyes again, attempts counting the beats of his inhalations and exhalations, but numbers are unreadable things, symbols with no meaning and all there has ever been or ever will be is Hux.

Behind his shut eyes, Ren can see Hux standing in the doorway of the med bay, staring back at him, looking for all the world like he wants to say something and can’t. He can hear a bit of what Hux said in the doorway, but he can’t decipher whether or not it’s a dream or his brain’s desperate attempt to give him something false and soft to hold onto. 

Ren can feel the surrounding troopers and Officers – all of them look too frightened of him to approach. He is a feral animal most days and he knows that – he knows they all have good reason to fear him, but Hux never feared him. Hux respected him, even on the days he rather hated Ren – or perhaps he never hated Ren at all and only hated what Ren _did_. 

There is no danger to him now, though. His bones have turned to steam, his improbable heart is dented and ugly, empty and slow. He misses Hux and he wants to apologize. He remembers Starkiller – he remembers Hux standing over him, shouting coordinates into his earpiece and helping him board a rescue pod. He remembers it all – he only wants a chance to say that he’s sorry. He only wants to talk to Hux again, see him, smell that familiar cologne and feel the fine leather of Hux’s glove under his own calloused fingertips.

When the nurses come to collect him off the floor, he’s on the cusp of consciousness, fading quickly, the Light leaving him like a gust of wind passing through and making room for Darkness and rage and unbearable sadness. Tears fall readily and continuously down his face as he’s dragged away from the chamber. 

He cared about Hux. He hopes Hux knew that – he isn’t sure Hux did and he ought to have told Hux, but they didn’t exactly live in a time or place where sharing that was wise. But, Stars, he hopes Hux knew – he couldn’t see Ren’s corresponding auras or feel the glad shifts in his energies, but they were there. Hux made Ren happy and Ren is rather certain Hux never meant to – he simply was the man he was and that, it would seem, was enough. 

He thinks he tells a nurse to preserve Hux’s body, that he will be strong enough soon to bring the dead back to life with the Dark side, that Snoke has promised him such power and that this must all be a test. He might imply that Hux probably isn’t dead at all, but waiting for him someplace far and Ren must be healed with haste so that he can get to Hux and bring him back safely.

The nurse is a dark skinned woman with round, worried eyes and with tears still dripping down his jaw, he says, “yes, that’s all it is. This isn’t goodbye. It’s – this will be fine. It will be fine. Preserve him. I’ll get him back. I’ll get him back. Not to worry – it’s not real. This isn’t real.”

He chants that to himself until everything is black and he wonders if he’ll find Hux there, in the darkness. He might feel a pillow under his head, a thin sheet pulled over his chest, a butterfly needle puncturing his arm, but none of it matters. None of it matters at all.

_This isn’t goodbye._

_It can’t be._

Something awful and true and serrated wraps itself around his lungs and forces his breath to stutter when it assures him that it _is_ goodbye, it _can_ be and that when he wakes again, he will find that it _is_.


End file.
